• The United Nations peacebuilding architecture is a new and relatively recent institutional creation. To address the issue of what role the UN peacebuilding architecture could realistically be expected to perform ten years from now, this paper briefly examine what different theories have to tell us about the origins of new institutions, their operational dynamics, their challenges, their constraints, their pathologies, and their realistic possibilities.
• Cedric de Coning is research fellow at the African Center for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD) and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). He has served as a South African diplomat in Washington D.C. and Addis Ababa, as an election observer with the African Union in Ethiopia, Sudan and Algeria, and as a civilian peacekeeper with the United Nations in Timor Leste and with the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York. He is the vice-chair of the Board of Directors for the Peace Operations Training Institute (POTI). He is a member of the Research Advisory Board of the Crisis Management Centre Finland (CMC Finland), a member of the UNICEF Advisory Group on their ‘Education in Peacebuilding’ project, and a member of the UNEP Senior Expert Review Group for their ‘Greening the Blue: Peacekeeping, Natural Resources and the Environment’ report.

  Clarity, Coherence and Context: Three Priorities for Sustainable Peacebuilding